


In Which Sandbagging is the Ultimate Form of Love

by hanktalkin



Series: Bites Back [1]
Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, No Dialogue, POV Second Person, Self-Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 06:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16444778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanktalkin/pseuds/hanktalkin
Summary: and it hurts like a bitch





	In Which Sandbagging is the Ultimate Form of Love

You hear her before you see her.

She’s sniffling, ~~pathetic~~ , already injured as the Pig chases her through the corn. You saw her from the house, knew she was leading the killer right to your half-finished generator, and slipped down into the safety of the weeds sprouting against the stairs. Now you’re silent, watching as she weaves through the corn and tilted barrels in a chase that has only one, unavoidable, end.

If the Pig gets her, that’s it, no matter if the gates open or not. It’s the last for you too, of course, but she’s slow and hunted and the eventuality of the chase will catch up to her no matter how she spends the intermittence.

You slink further into the field, the chase drawing so close you feel your heart in your ears, mingling with Claudette’s whimpers and the Pigs tramping boots. They’re so close to you, that final blade readied on her arm as it really is The End-

Claudette limps past the barrel you’re crouched behind-

The hidden blade lurches from its contraption-

You place yourself in-between her and the slash.

It’s not thought or adrenaline or anything else that usually makes your decisions in this place, and as the arm comes down you can see the Pig is just as surprised as you. No, that’s wrong. You cannot be surprised anymore, no longer wired for anything except accepting a reality and reacting. The Pig rears back as a sudden body halts her momentum, but you’re already pushing past her, dashing under her arm as her second sloppy attack fails to connect.

Claudette is gone from your sight and your thoughts-

Because before what you wanted was _finish this_  and _don’t die_  and _reach the fire_  but feeling her within a hair’s breath of you replaced all normal wants with _see her safe_.

There’s a six-inch wound in your shoulder. You run.

Scrambling now in the dark, you’re the new target of the killer’s hunt as you weave through tractors and corn. You double back and leave tracks and twist play off the monster’s vision that’s throttled by the ~~corpse~~ mask, and you run the clock ever more down as you don’t focus on why you’ve done what you just did. There’s things you can see that she can’t, tricks you’ve learned in your time here, and a stack of wood dropped in front of her face is the split second advantage you need.

You fall against the combine and go still.

Twitching, she stands again, shaking her head as her snout tries to point to her impending victim. It takes a second to be sure, but then she glowers. She’s lost visual.

The rip in your shoulder hits you like a truck. It’s been twice torn through with a hook, the hasty stitches now reopened much wider as the tear goes all the way to the top of your collar bone. Blood saturates your clothes and leaks down your stomach, pools of it congealing a neat trail to you if she would just look down-

Your heart thunders as she growls in frustration, tearing the weeds around you as you hide just feet away. It’s agony, no mater how many times you’ve run this hellhole, and you stuff you fist in your mouth to keep the cries inside.

She’s close, so close, if she turns at just the wrong time-

Another night lost as you don’t even get the relief of the fire-

Suppress the whimpering as Claudette once again leaps to your mind-

She moves on.

You don’t move the first minute after, knowing how good she is at silence, at hunting unseen through the woods. Instead you keep curled, biting down on an otherwise useless hand when your arm is almost entirely unattached. But once you’ve counted to sixty you know that she’s taken the hunt somewhere else, and you are free to go.

The combine won’t come undone from your back.

It’s stuck to you, holding you down, even when you know that that has nothing to do with it. Not the combine but the gravity that keeps you here, not enough blood left in you to power your limbs. You lie down in the grass, heavy, willing for the ambition to move but even the most powerful of willpower can’t overcome this threshold.

You fade, in and out-

Wondering if that was her footsteps returning or your imagination-

Knowing that if another fight comes you don’t even have enough to make it interesting-

Soft hands prop you up against the machine.

And they are _soft_ , even after all this time, kneading against the wound with tape and alcohol that hurt so little comparatively you don’t even hiss. At first you wonder why you can’t see her, and it takes a good thirty second to realize you haven’t yet opened your eyes. They flutter, and you catch her; that frown, always scrunched when she’s concentrating, beating across her face as does her best to put you back together. She’s…her. Just so undeniably her.

Somewhere as you fade in and out, the horn sounds—the others got the last one up.

But Claudette doesn’t stop. Not until you feel like you can keep your head up and twitch your hands again. She slips one thin shoulder under your arm and lifts—you have no protest. You move your legs, match her step, and are conscious enough to be thankful that she knows where you’re going; if someone had asked you where the exit was on pain of death, you’d keel over right then.

She shuffles the two of you slowly, vulnerably, through the field. Any sight of the Pig is the end, but you keep walking, and, ultimately, your feet scrape on brick.

She keeps dragging you along, even after the safety of the dark mist consumes you. You can feel something budding inside her now: a question, or maybe even a small word of grace. But your blood isn’t coming back anytime soon, and your head lolls against hers, so the two of you keep walking until the air takes you completely.


End file.
